Road Trip Photos

Well hello there! It’s officially summer and I hope you’re planning (or already enjoying) some fun and relaxed days! My family has been on a five week road trip. Yes, we are that crazy. We did this a few years ago (only four weeks that time) and it was so amazing, we decided to do it again. We only saw about half the country that time, so we needed to see the rest. With a 14 and 16 year old, we’re feeling the years slipping away and wanted to spend this time together and show them this beautiful country.

I’ve written several posts about how we manage our food when we travel (you can read those posts here, here and here) so I’m not going to talk about that here. My phone died as soon as we left our house and I lost everything on it and I did not have my recipe post quite ready for today so instead, I’m going to give you a little photo tour of our trip.

We live in North Carolina and are headed all the way to the west coast for this trip. Some of our plans have changed due to covid and somethings are just not planned yet because…of covid. Things keep changing so we’re attempting to be flexible, which I don’t love, but I’m trying. 🙂 Here are a few highlights so far…

Pike’s Peek, Colorado – The snow was so deep, we couldn’t make it all the way to the end of the trail. But it was magical!
This is a terrible picture, but people ask how we budget for a trip like this and this is part of how we do it – we camp as much as we can. We actually had pretty bad weather for camping on this trip – very, very cold – but we survived! This was Mother’s Day so I was allowed to “relax” in my sleeping bag while the others packed up. Such luxury!
And then we started seeing landscape like this and we knew warmer weather was ahead. Except that it was only warm during the day and still really cold at night!
Pretty scary hike to get here, but we made it to Delicate Arch at Arches National Park. This trip has definitely been a growing one for me – I’ve done many things I never thought I would! Lots of hikes and roads with very steep cliffs and no guard-rails!
Our teenage photographer requested a silly pose and this is what she got! This was in Zion and called the checkerboard for the way the rock developed this grid pattern.
We hiked down into the Grand Canyon – 6 miles in, 6 miles out. It was HARD! And HOT! But so amazing to be down in there with a 360 degree view of the canyon walls. This picture was from the morning when we were just getting started and had no idea what we were in for!
A quick detour through a town on Route 66. My son loves this kind of stuff! We live in a really interesting, diverse and cool world!
We had amazing seafood in San Francisco!
This one ate a whole Dungeness crab and enjoyed having permission to play with his food!
Yosemite – our favorite national park on this trip (Glacier still holds the #1 spot for all of us)
Hiking the mist trail with my favorite person. This was an amazing hike. It was about 10 miles, but took us to (and over and beside) two waterfalls and gave us some spectacular views!
More Yosemite
Yosemite again. It’s just that beautiful.
Hollywood! These are my super stars!
Made it all the way to the Pacific, a first for the kids and I.
And as of now, we’re on our way back East. Had to stop and visit Chip and Joanna at Magnolia. Kate and I had a great time here! We actually really like Texas. The people here are so down to earth and very kind.

We have a few more days to go and I have very mixed feelings. I’m a homebody at heart and so do miss the comforts of home, but it’s been such a wonderful time with my family. I’m feeling very, very grateful!